Beck

if you like wildlife, don't take your house dogs in the wilderness. do wildlife a favor and leave them at home. lots of that going on, the transference of disease from house dog to wildlife...

aren't we talking about the rocker (whoops I went off topic with that GiGI thing, even though you could TRS things with it!!!) but yes, the rocker is the shizzie, it works best in side by side comparision and the beta is out there on it as the posters have said...

that's my new plaquette belay device, silly! my heart belongs to Teddy, dontchyaknow?

and where does a pirate drink it? At the B-arrrrrr! some welder chick i was dating loved pirate jokes but i can't remember any. at least i think she was a woman.

thats the one. that's the smoothest feeding, smoothest catching, least damaging TRS device on the market today. thats the one to use. a piece of equipment i bought recently that ROCKS from europe as a self locking belay device/ emergency ascender all arounder is the Kong GiGi. climbs ropes easy, rapells, belays, also sets up as auto lock with one extra biner. just like many autolockers like the b-52 or the petzl reverso thingie...

glaughh! don't get me started about books, I'm the biggest book worm you will ever run into (I'm sooo bad!!!) for a great classic look at books, get a last whole earth catalog from the late 60's -early70's. its filled with great ideas... the new whole earth catalog is okay as well... i read, or scanned, EVERY non fiction book at the childrens library one summer when I was 9 or something ( I made it a point of it!) , and I've never stopped reading... one year as a teen i lived in room that was a 4,000 volume library. it was put togther by a philosophy professor. i lived there in the attic library with her daughter. it was very educational! I could walk up to a Dewey Decimal arranged roomfull of books and read about anything! what a treat!!! I am such a nerd! my tastes in fiction, russian industrialists of the stalinist era, french surrealists from about the same time, classic early fictions like ones by Rabelais, Dumas, Chaucer, Doyle for early mysteries, Poe for macabe. many good authors from the french enlightenment period as well. early american authors are very inspiring in their intamacy with nature. James Fenimore Cooper is plabulos to read, i still want a floating fort out in the middle of the adirondacks with canoe ports and canons and indian loyalists... Muir mentions the deforestation around Seattle in his early writings about the Seattle area, and climbed rainier in wool and hobnails... also, try Mark Twain.... he is great! as is saroyan, steinbeck, faulkner, chandler, and for humor, thurber.. best humor writer america has ever seen but from 80 years ago American Folk history in the retelling of tales is also so rich.... who knows the term "prarie schooner" don't forget to look at great photo books out there, like Ashael Curtis ' book on Seattle, also Diane Arbus if you like freaks, and many great nature photogs as well... oh, and the american post WWII Beat phenomenon bears some serious schooling, let me just recommend "Desolation Angels" by Jack Kerouac if you love the North Cascades (top ten best mountain reading EVER!) plus ...... hmmm.... i can't really ....... ............

a strong second for Mount Analogue or one of Daumals other seminal classics, "A Night of Serious Drinking", in my mind some of the most compelling, contemplative fiction ever written. up there with that seagull story, but with drinks and cigars and stuff... the real question is, what do you LIKE to read? for narrative nonfiction, ANYthing by John McPhee is excellent, go look at his books, you will find something you are interested. I recommend his stories about alaska, the birch bark canoe, all his rock books if you like a lot of pages, the swiss military, encounters with the arch druid, the one on atomic weapons is scary, and the control of nature is one of the more impressive yet disenheartinging tales of human woe and triumph its incredible. oh and the one about the merchant marine.... travel, go with Paul Theroux (sp?) or the classic american one, "Travels with charely" by john steinbeck, or the travel book written by Ian Fleming, or one of the first travel books from the japanese poet, Bassho, called "Long Road to the Interior" if you like more contemplative. non fiction , McPhee; fiction, Daumal (but he is very hard to find in the average bookstore) or about 500 other authors. what do you like to read? what style, what types?

unexpectedly spent a very nice unplanned day in town with a friend and something fun around town Thanks, that was a blast!!! I forgot how much fun not climbing on a good weather weekend can be..it was some of the most fun I've had all summer (Really, Ab!) lets go do it again! maybe we can even go climbing over rocks, or go for a hike out by a river with a picnic basket while there's still summer like weather...

true in many regards, no daypack sized pack needs a frame and will climb better as a result (my 15 year old ruck climbs better than my Bora 30 with framesheet and loadlifter suspension (which I bought for 10 bucks, Erik! but a 5,000 CU with a framesheet and stays will greatly benefit the user unless they are carrying a bunch of pillows or something.. and I forgot, that BD throws in a plastic sheet now with the ice pack in their foam pad mix, my apologies... it isn't really a suspension as it isn't suspended like when you look at the front wheels of your car or a I or E frame backpack... but it is a Frameshat or whatever the poster said, my mistake.

again, curious as to what "framsheet" the poster means about the BD ice sack as well. It's a RUCKSACK as well. it has a foam pad in there you can pull out to use as a bivy sheet. However, the nozone has both a framesheet AND a bivy pad.

say, what's wayne's last name? And, wayne, if you read this, send me a PM willya. We've got Erden on board as well and want to talk a sec about logistics...

most mchale packs of assault size, like the SARC series and larger, all have a framesheet or stays system,though. At least i believe so. and no, matt the heaviest pack is the military gig by gregory that weighs in at a measely 28 pounds! but the packs made by mystery ranch for Spec forces are significantly lighter. buy one with a framesheet if you carry over 30. don't go ruck unless you like potato sacks (Yvon Chounaird used to steal potatos out of farmers fields to sell to other climbers at camp 4, early origins of the phrase dirtbag.. oop, off topic..!) a lightest pack quest is sheer folly! buy one that does the job. lightly.

i'd reccommend looking for lightweight packs with actual framesheets and stays, there are a few mid 3 pound packs that carry weight extremely well, and don't feel like a pack of potatoes. and I'm curious as to what "suspension" system in the andinista the poster is talking about? the shoulder straps? it's a RUCKSACK. no frame or otherwise contrived suspension other than straps and a wasitbelt, maybe some padding in the back. same with the golite. id definetly recommend a framesheet. but go lightly, and buy on the smallish side. however, you can get a full winter weeklong pack that is light. one of my packs is a carbon "x" stays, minimal back padded 4,800 CU + extendible that comes in at the mid threes. good for a week midwinter easy. look at the arcteryx kamshin series or the nozone (sweet! best alpine pack, IMO) and kelty has a few good lightweight packs, the really expensive ones, then some that are a pound or so heavier at half the price... but the packs with frames will ALWAYS carry weight better than the frameless. let us not delude ourselves. and they don't climb half bad.

i was watching the second plane hit the tower live, then rode the bike to work with the first aid kit in the saddlebags. The next flights i took soon after 9/11 were in the Chinooks.

plab. met with graphic designer chicks who do ads for the paper, then my ad saleswoman, then off to lunch and a quick game of pool, then a haircut by my hairstylist(hottie!) friend of mine,then an hour of billards again, now shortly off on a walk to the market to pick up dinner and have a quick drink upstairs at the clubhouse before back home to make dinner. did a couple hours work this AM, that's it. worked more on my pool game today than anything else.

mattp said it well. do not forget to be prepared to endure a suffer fest at whatever level of "fast and light" you are going it at. A $20 emergency bivy from adventure medical kits that weighs 8 oz, it is a good "always take" insurance blanket (literally) i cannot rcommend highly enough. a good system for when the shiddzle hitsa the fandizzle is a must take in my opinion. do not forget what you need to survive! and i already mentioned conditioning as a necessary part of the equasion, you should still be able to run with a thirty pound pack, you can do it longer if its a twelve pound pack and gear. so, not necessarily the faster you can go the lighter you will be, but the other way around. lighter= further. further predicates the light, unless you are a grunt. but, having endured sufferfests for over two decades (first time I got lost in the woods in a rainstorm, walking in a circle, I was 11. (fuck, the first three years i went winter camping we didn't even bring tents! we couldn't afford them or something?) - i do need to chime in with, its amazing what you can withstand as a human and not die. although, i caution, like everyone else has said in here, you need to LEARN YOUR OWN LIMITS and not what you read in a book or on a website about "hey, i shaved 20 pounds out of my pack and never carry a bivy system anymore" or whatever. BE PREPARED. however, if you need to sleep in a snowbank by just diving in the damn thing, chances are, you'd make it through the night, if you had the right soft shells on! but, having done plenty of stupid bungle sufferfests out there, i have learned what i can endure. and it's lots. I was always going hypothermic as a youth, easily a dozen times, falling thru ice, getting lost, etc. What's an old yooper trick for getting back home from the bar in a 20 below canadian clipper, a real blizzard? you don't. you go to sleep in the nearest snowbank. part of my cultural heritage, seriously. and having done this on innumerable occasions, i say, give some lighter options a try. but learn for yourself what they can do for you, and never let the gear be in charge of killing you because you left it in the car. like the no gauze option, IMO it's a bad idea. duct tape a couple of maxi pads inside your helmet for the big gusher. You don't want to use your puffy as a band aid if it's 15 below. Always be prepared to staunch massive blood loss. my 2 cents. I don't like seeing people die because they weren't prepared.

less is more, no doubt. those stephenson's warmlite got me mighty intrested in the "great outdoors" that's for sure! but yes, less is more. I once spent 3 weeks living under a 4x7 ship's banner I heisted to make a shelter out of- smallest tarp I've ever used, but it worked as well as my current siltarps i've got and packed up just as small.

no, muffy, absolutely not. I'm off to torture young children who come in with overdue books and go spend some time in the 'erotica' section, flirting with goth girls...later.

no, that's just the non technical kit. pack, sleeping bag, shelter,extra clothing, foampad, first aid, stove, cookit, headlamp, hydration/purification system with 1l water in it . those essentials. winter, 12 pound, summer under 10 pounds. add technical stuff and it adds up fast from that point. but light and less. Backes talked about the ultimate alpine rack they came up with. don't quote me, but i think it was 6 nuts, 3 pins and two cams? made up a complete alpine rack to him and mark twight when they sent the chezch direct in that 60 hour push....

i can get a two night winter trip kit into a 40liter backpack with room enough to pack a 12 pack along if i wanted- i think it's about 12 pounds winter, easily 10 pounds summer or less. fully equipped for the most heinous weather. but you'e absolutely, JayB. you cannot replace experience in the safety triangle for moving fast and light in the mountains. it takes discipline, fitness, and skills, not merely "golite" -ing it. many of these 'ultralite' freaks you run into are usually dipknockers that don't know what a rucksack is or how a rucksack carries, and wouldn't be able to pitch a tarp if it came with a hang tag of how to do it... yeah. it's mountain savvy that lets you move fast, light, and safe. talking to scott backes over dinner before his summer slide show, he talked about the way you get is there by discipline. those guys have it dialed in.

actually, we're a couple of librarians.

it is very similar to powershield, but about three times as strechy, which I found very nice, i've got big mountain mid winter bibs that fit and perform more like tights. they do not do well in rain, but in snow conditions, wow. 60 mph ground blizzards and ice storms, they were the shizzle. slogging uphill on hood predawn to get some early tracks, worked great. definetly. the cascades can be cruel cruel taskmasters to anybody. but these are great in the cold. WB-400 is a perfect winter in the rockies weight soft shell.

makes me wonder if THEY even read it! gosh, i hope the librarians don't take over this site, then NOBODY'd get any spraying done in here...

man, you guys must be the smartest two people on this sight! such good posts, such few spelling mistakes.. what are you two, a couple of librarians?

hey, jay B , wb-400 ROCKS! mid winter in the cascades. i used it quite a bit last winter, it is super, super strechy, warm, and breathable... i loved it. my briefs, the bibs, and a layered soft shell top were all I needed moving fast up to 10,000ft midwinter. there are so many versions of schoeller now, it boggles the imagination! (I'm wearing schoeller dryskin as i post this!)